


Lost & Found

by Dreadful Weather Today (TearoomSaloon)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Heartbreak, Hurt, I mean you'll still cry, I will break your heart with words, Promises, happyish ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 11:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1777387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TearoomSaloon/pseuds/Dreadful%20Weather%20Today
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's like a bee sting at first, losing her. But the hole in his hand becomes infected, and soon he's bleeding on the floor. Poor little dragon prince, you've clipped your own wings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It hurts a bit. It stings as he sits there on the harpsichord bench, pen in hand, poised to write.

But the notes won’t flow.

He gets to the ending phrase but cannot close the door on her refrain. It lingers half-played on his fingers, the music humming in the air, echoing off the walls so softly, so faintly. It lingers like her scent in his mind, the light in her eyes, the twitch of a smile on her lips. It lingers like her warmth, touching his cold, cold heart.

Her.

The one he never meant to love.

Her laugh floats through his empty house and he knows she’s not here. She hasn’t been here for what feels like years, but he can remember how she fit in his arms, how she squealed when he hugged her too tightly to his chest, how the smooth planes of her shoulders felt under his lips. How she tasted like wines and fruits and liquid sunlight. How they spent so many freezing nights tucked deep under his satin sheets, bodies pressed so tightly for heat, her skin against his skin, her lips against his lips. He counted the number of times she whispered  _I love you_  into his neck, locked that number up inside, holding it dear against his dragon heart.

 _I might be falling in love with you, Hannibal_ , she said into a coffee cup, her hair tousled and tangled and beautiful.

Good, he had told her, because he was surely falling in love with her.

He lost control. He gave in to impulse and lost control of his empathy because of her.  _For_ her. He wanted to be genuine. He wanted to be her ground to stand on, her beacon, her heaven. He wanted to be her lover, but he wound up her hell.

And even now that she’s left, the tears down her face, her cheeks red and eyes puffy, he can’t let go. He can only look on, look after her, see the footprints.

And he still loves her. Is still  _falling_  in love with her.

 _That’s what you get, little dragon_   _prince_ , he chides himself. _That’s what you get for trying to be human. Trying to experience the most human emotion. You’ve been stripped raw; is love so different than hatred?_

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know because he has never singularly loved and hated someone so much, he’s never bled for something this much since Mischa—loving her as her brother, her guardian, and hating her for dying, for leaving him.

Loving Alana as her paramour, her  _stability_. Hating her for recoiling, for hating him. For loving him.

He hasn’t felt so human in decades. He hasn’t felt so alive without this pain. He shut it down, down, and forgot why the good  _was_  so good. Without a balance of joy and sorrow, what was the beauty in life?

 _Christ_ , he didn’t want to call this beautiful. If he were being poetic and detached, fine. But he was bleeding onto the keys, bleeding onto the floor. An organ that had previously only served to pump blood and find superficial  _pulchritude_  in everything was screaming from use. He didn’t know what to do with all these emotions, how to control them.

Spare him, please, he’s only a lost little boy far from home, far across the ocean and far across time. He’s a lost little boy with blood up to his elbows and tears down his cheeks, and his parents are nowhere to be found. Spare him from this, he doesn’t need more hurt.

It feels like he’s removed a mask, like he’s revealed himself, his  _true_  self, who is a different man than he assumed. He’s a good man, a smart man, loving and kind and generous. He’d make a good husband for her.

But this man is just one part of a whole, and the whole is nasty and bitter and cruel. Controlled. The whole hurts her. The whole has thorns.

He’d give so much just to hold her again, to kiss her and cook for her and pluck out his pesky thorns, smile warmly at her big blue eyes and tell her how much he loves her. Really tell her, in long sentences and unbroken thoughts, for days and nights until their story stops. He’d give the world to nuzzle her neck and measure her growing stomach when she’s with child. His child.

His lost, never to be child.

Their lost proof of love.

He rests his head on the keys, producing a tinny dissonant sound. The action feels too defeated to be his own, but his vision is filled with ivory and he  _must_  have done that on purpose.

He can’t finish her movement. He can’t. He can’t let her go, or believe her chapter in his life has closed. He is a manipulator of all things, but this woman—this  _one_  woman—has manipulated him. Has manipulated this injured prince into loving deeply again, into feeling pain.

He’s feverish and hazy in sleep, unable to distinguish reality from fantasy. He cries out in his dreams, lost in this bed that is a thousand miles across without her beside him. Lost in these white satin sheets without her warmth. Lost within his lucid nightmares without her love to guide him. Without her, his compass has become defective, rendering him lost.

But he can’t stop his human error, he can’t stop loving her, and he’s never felt so raw, so alive.

He detests it with all his might.


	2. Chapter 2

And there she is.

There she is, where he never expected her to stand again, wearing an expression he should have never again seen.

Her eyes are dry but red, her cheeks shiny and flushed and puffy. He takes one look at the quiver of her lips and he breaks down, falling to his knees on his own floor. It frightens her and she flinches back, expecting him to hurt her.  _Silly, silly girl_. Dragons don’t harm their princesses. Dragons love them with all their might.

And this little dragon prince loves his princess more than the seas and the earth and the the winds and the time.

He’s crying, idiot boy. Silent tears are streaming down his face as he takes her hands and kisses them, kisses them, kisses them. He doesn’t even know which languages he’s speaking to her in, only that none are expressing himself like he wants. 

 _I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you, Alana Bloom_ , he says in so many tongues his head swims.  _Whatever you want, my love, my darling, I shall grant you. But don’t leave me, please, please._

She inhales sharply, and she breaks too, collapsing to the floor beside him. She’s so stressed and she’s guilty and ashamed and she hurts, everything hurts. She can’t figure out if she hurts because of him, what he’s done, or because she loves him still, and she can feel the crater in her chest blow through her body at the idea of abandoning him.

She smiles at him so weakly, nudging tears from her eyes.  _Well_ , she says,  _I’ve done it. I’ve fallen in love. And it’s really nothing like the movies._

 _It’s nothing like the movies because I fall in love every time I see your face_ , he says quietly, gazing directly into her eyes.  _And I can’t stop. And I—I’m—I’m scared_.  _I’m so scared of losing you, thought I had lost you, that I’d hurt you too badly, and I—_

_You kill people, Hannibal._

_And I’m in_ love  _you, Alana._  His voice is growing thick and he’s so overwhelmed with these uncontrollable emotions that he’s not being rational, not using the right words.  _It hurts in my chest and it makes my shoulders ache and I can’t eat and I cannot finish anything. It feels like my whole body is falling apart_.

She nods.  _Yes, that’s exactly how it feels, being in love._  And, finally, she scoots closer and wraps her arms around his neck and she cries into his shoulder.  _I’m not letting you go again, I promise. I’ll take you as you are, Hannibal Lecter, no matter the damage. You’re mine to love._

He can barely hear her as he peppers her exposed skin with kisses, hugging her so tightly to himself. He’s crumbling like cheese, he’s absolutely losing himself. She wants him, she  _wants_  him. She wants him and she’ll take him for what he is, what he was, what he will be.

 _I will never leave you, or hurt you_ , he whispers into her neck.  _As long as you love me, I will love you._


End file.
